Captive Heart (15 page)

“That’s a pretty big invitation.” All serious now, no play.

“It’s a real one, and it’s always open. For example, that dream Dio had that upset you so badly. Start with that.”

For a time Andy gazed out the grimy window, watching New York City pedestrians troop by, heading God only knew where, for a thousand different purposes. When she did speak, her voice went soft. “She dreamed about Tarek coming back from the dead. Some people brought him back by sacrificing Neala and me, and he had more power than ever. As much power as the Leviathan I killed. In Dio’s dream, Tarek killed her. Well, tore her apart. Those were the words she used.”

The thought of Andy and Neala being murdered made Jack tense so fast, so deep inside, he barely managed to keep his expression neutral. “Was her dream a vision?”

“The Mothers don’t think so.” Andy brought her gaze back to Jack’s face. When he saw the tears glittering in the corners of her eyes, he wanted to hold her until all the pain and danger faded to nothing. “We reported it, but Mother Anemone already got back to us and said it’s probably metaphorical. That it means we’re tangling with forces as powerful as the Leviathan.”

“I don’t like that.” Jack meant all of it, especially the part about Andy and Neala being sacrificed, but he knew she would focus on the Leviathan part. He expected her to say something sarcastic, something full of bravado to chase away her own tears.

Instead, she seemed to steel herself. Then, staring straight into his eyes, she said, “The Keres gave me the honor of slaying the Leviathan because in their eyes, it killed my mate and I had the right to vengeance.”

Jack took that in without flinching. His own instincts told him that this got to the center of Andy. This was what he needed to know, what he most needed to understand about her if he wanted any chance to know her better. And he definitely wanted that chance.

“Did you consider Sal Freeman your mate?”

“Yes.” No hesitation. No game playing. He saw sadness sink across her face, but also acceptance, and maybe something like distance. Like she’d been working on this thing and she’d managed to get a little perspective.

“I’ve never had a lover murdered, but I lost some people in my family—and so many friends in Afghanistan I thought my soul might bleed out on the sand.” Jesus. Had he said that out loud? He’d never told anybody anything like that. The truth of it punched him in the gut, and his throat got tight as he made himself finish. “I wish I’d gotten to kill the Rakshasa who took out my men in the Valley of the Gods, but I’m damned glad Camille and your fighting group made that happen.”

He hadn’t meant to get so forceful, but he wasn’t sorry he was talking to her. Talking seemed easy with her. He had a sense of her water energy, something relaxing, something soothing, totally at odds with her eye-grabbing appearance. Another layer, deeper than all the rest.

“What happened in the war—do you think it’s your fault, Jack?”

Shit. Who was getting to the heart of things now? His damned heart. Direct hit. “It was my unit.”

He expected her to argue, to try to use some modern mental health shit to talk him out of that, but she said, “You were right, back on the beach when you came to talk to me on Kérkira. If I hadn’t suddenly discovered my Sibyl water talents, I would have accepted command of the OCU.” She pushed some of her curls behind her ear. “Commanders are always responsible for everything, fair or not. When people march out and die on your orders, you don’t get the luxury of whining that it’s not your fault.”

Jack didn’t know what to say back, couldn’t quite find the words, but
thank you
came to mind. He hadn’t expected her understanding, but getting it felt damned good.

“The past can hold on for a long, long time,” she said. The pain in her voice made him want to hold her, make it go away—or at least ease it as much as pain like that ever got eased. “War scars people. Duncan and John, they have their issues from battle. Hell, I was active duty four years in the Marines and saw my share of crap—but nothing like what you faced. You went through a lot in Afghanistan.”

Jack got down a little more of his sandwich before he said, “We all did. I’m nothing special.”

“The Rakshasa. The Valley of the Gods. That was special. Outside the ordinary, I mean.” She was half through with her own sandwich, and the other section looked completely different from the one she’d finished. “I’ve never commanded as many men as you, but I’ve lost officers on the streets when I was in charge—so I get it. And I’m sorry, Jack.”

“Thanks.”

Her smile made him feel everything from sadness to elation in a few quick seconds. How did she
do
that? Had to be magic. Had to be.

“So, you want to do this date thing again sometime?” Andy’s smile flashed, more tentative, a little self-conscious, and Jack felt like she had her hand on his heart, squeezing.

“Oh, yeah. What about tonight?”

She shook her head. “Patrol. And if we shirked off a second night, somebody might graffiti our front door.”

“Tomorrow night?”

This time he got a nod. “Tomorrow night will work.”

“Want to meet somewhere so you don’t have to deal with your quad?”

“Gotta face them sooner or later. I get to pick the restaurant.”

“And the time after that, it’ll be my call.”

“You’re that confident we’ll have a third date?” More smiling. Jack hoped she never stopped.

“Yes.” He finished off the last bite of his sandwich, relieved, but also a little disappointed. He’d gotten used to the jarring taste, and if they finished, they’d have to leave. “But before that—I had an idea about the sketch that was giving you trouble.”

“I’m listening.” Andy dug into the rest of her sandwich, not too fast, taking her time, and Jack wondered if she didn’t want to leave, either.

“We know all of this is mob-connected, and we’re suspecting some sort of demon conversion, right? So it makes sense that the demon might be somebody we’ve run into before.”

“A known criminal.” She considered this. Seemed to like the prospects. “Somebody on the books.”

“Maybe.” He thought he could look at her forever, even in a dive eating freaky bagel sandwiches. “I pulled a bunch of mug shots for you to search through when you have time. You might see something that helps you line up the face on the sketch.”

“Sure. How about when we leave here?”

She kept at her sandwich, a little faster now. Good. He didn’t have to think about taking her home yet. He’d have her for a few more minutes, maybe a couple of hours—and maybe they’d make some progress on the case, too.

When she’d polished off the last sprout and crumble of cheese, Jack paid the tab and the two of them walked into the sunlit morning. It had to be close to noon, or maybe a little after. Damn, time moved too fast.

They reached the Jeep, and as he reached to open the door for her, Andy put her hand on his arm. Her soft skin resting against his, the connection of her fingers gripping him, made Jack’s body come to full attention all over again.

“That was nice. A nice start.” She rose on her toes and kissed his cheek, her wet, full lips lingering along his cheekbone.

His mind filled with her sweet scent. The buildings around them, the Jeep, the crowd surging down the sidewalk—everything faded away from Jack except Andy and her fingers on his arm and the way she moved her lips on his face. He felt like a man under a spell, unwilling to move because he might shatter the magic.

Her mouth whispered down his face until she found his. Her kiss came gently, tentative and sensual, and she tasted like ocean and woman and a thousand spices he couldn’t name. She gripped his other arm, balancing herself but getting closer, her breasts brushing against his chest.

Animal instincts flooded Jack. He couldn’t hold back even if he wanted to, not with her this close, not with her lips on his. He pulled loose from her grip and caught her before she could tip backward and slip away from him. Then he kissed her like he wanted to, slow and deep and long, and only a tiny part of his brain logged the fact that he hadn’t been hit with a tidal wave.

Yet.

Somewhere between the last bite of garlic and cheese and the sunlight on the sidewalk, Andy had lost her mind. She’d touched Jack. She’d kissed him.

And now—

Now he was bending forward, tilting her head back, and taking what he wanted.

His lips covered hers, firm and hot, and pepper spice scorched her senses as he held her closer and tighter. The pressure on her mouth turned insistent, commanding her to give him everything, to keep absolutely nothing back for herself, nothing that might save her sanity. The world ceased to exist save for the burning taste of his lips, the rough demand of his tongue. Her mouth moved against his, and she slid her hands under his shirt to find the hard ridges of muscle defining his waist.

She wanted him naked.

She wanted him, period.

She wanted the hard proof of his desire out of those jeans and in her hands. What she could do to him … what she would let him do to her …

She got wet in every way just letting herself imagine. Water soaked her clothes, soaked his, and he kept kissing her out on the sidewalk in front of anybody who cared to watch. Wild as she was, she’d never done anything as public as this in her life.

When Jack ended the kiss and gazed down at her, Andy didn’t want anything but another kiss, so she took it, and another after that, until they were both half drenched with random water she’d pulled toward them.

“Somebody’s gonna think we’re auditioning for a wet T-shirt contest,” Jack murmured against her ear, making Andy shiver from the deep, delicious sound.

“You’d win.” God, her voice was nothing but a shaking rasp. “Maybe tonight would work out—if you don’t mind dates at four in the morning when I get off patrol.”

The tension in his muscles let her know he was thinking about it, that he wanted to take her up on it, but he kissed the top of her head and said, “No. Work, then rest. I want you strong and ready because I’m going to wear you out. Still on for tomorrow night, though?”

I might die here, and I think I’d be happy
. Andy liked the feel of his face in her hair, of his hands on her body. Every second with him made her want another second, then a minute, an hour, a day. She could get used to this way too fast.

“You’re a tease, Jack Blackmore.”

“And you’re beautiful.” His hot breath tickled her neck this time, driving her nearly crazy.

Her body ached from wanting him, but she managed to keep her act together enough to say, “I’m still picking the restaurant tomorrow night.”

He pulled away from her again, this time letting her go as he smiled at her. “We’ll see about that.”

Andy wanted him back right away, wanted him next to her, rubbing her, holding her, stroking her. Her mind heaved and the sky seemed to give off colored light. Kaleidoscopic New York, and she hadn’t even needed a shot of Jack Daniel’s to see the world in living color.

It’s been so long
, part of her mind thought while her mouth came up with, “There’s no sense fighting me for control.”

“The fight’s half the fun.”

That smile. It really could kill a woman
. “Tease, tease, tease.”

Andy got in the Jeep breathing like she’d run five miles on a sandy beach. She knew her face had to look like a freckled cinnamon drop. As Jack got in the car, she realized the water stains on his clothes lined up with hers.

Oh, they were so not walking into OCU headquarters with matching water spots.

Her face got even hotter. “I’m going to dry us off, okay?”

Jack turned the key but didn’t move the Jeep from its parking spot. “If it involves touching me, don’t do it while I’m driving.”

Andy made herself look straight ahead, but the second he pulled into traffic, she slipped her hand toward his leg and rested it on his knee as she drew the water out of their clothing and shunted it onto the Jeep’s floor. “Am I a distraction, Jack?”

“You’re way more than that, sweetheart.” He waited until he was dry, then nudged her fingers off his leg.

“I’d kill most men for calling me sweetheart.”

“You’ve already tried to off me a few times, and I’m still here.”

The iron crescent moon around Andy’s neck gave a sharp tingle against her damp skin, and she lifted her fingers to it. Weird. That had happened before with Sibyl distress calls and emergencies, any power dark enough or strong enough to fire through projective metals and surfaces.

She reached out with her water energy, but didn’t feel anything beyond people and dogs and asphalt and concrete.

The tingling got worse.

Something snakelike and wrong slithered through her mind, muttering, almost like it was searching for her, calling out for her.

Andy …

She heard the sound. Just a whisper, but she was pretty sure she wasn’t imagining it.

Andy …

Close. In front of her.

What the hell was this, some psychotic demon ghost about to make a grab for her throat?

Andy’s heartbeat changed, skipping instead of pounding. She picked up more wavy wrongness around them. Unnatural energy, like darkness rippling across the lit surface of their world.

Andy …

“Jack, I think you should stop the Jeep.”

He put the brakes on without asking why.

At the same moment the Jeep jerked hard to the right, screeching across pavement and straight toward a line of parked cars by the sidewalk.

“Jack!”

“Tire.” His voice rose over the squeal of other cars and cabs peeling away from the Jeep.

Andy heard a loud pop. The Jeep jerked even more violently. She held the panic bar so tight she felt like her fingers might crack. Jack swore and fought the wheel as the Jeep smashed past a Toyota Prius, knocking the little blue hybrid sideways before hopping the curb and blasting through a gate into somebody’s private alley.

Jack rode the brakes hard. They spun. Smacked off something. The hood flew up. Airbags deployed with a chest-splitting crack, and for a second Andy saw nothing but white powder and cloth. She heard nothing but fluid hissing out of hoses and the bang of the Jeep’s hood as it crashed down.

Stopped.

After all the motion and squealing of tires, Andy’s senses buzzed, making noise in the relative silence. She fought with the airbag, clawing it and pushing it off her. Where was the street? The back of the alley?

She was facing the street out her passenger window. The crunched front of the Jeep sat about five feet from an alley wall. Behind them, another stone wall.

Three men—three very big men—seemed to materialize at the ruined alley gate.

Andy’s necklace burned her like steam off an iron. Wrong. Darkness. These men were all wrong. Every nerve in her body fired, and she wanted to claw her way through the Jeep’s metal roof.

“These aren’t friendlies,” she said to Jack, grabbing her SIG out of its ankle holster.

“Neither are those.” Jack jerked a thumb toward three more men heading toward them, alley-side. They were each carrying a MAC-10 “spray and pray” with a sound suppressor.

Jack drew his Glock, but Andy couldn’t quit looking at the submachine guns.

A thousand rounds per minute
, her mind informed her, the words jamming between her ears. “Fuck.”

The three assholes at the alley mouth pulled out matching MAC-10s.

Andy moved even as Jack yanked her down to the Jeep floor and covered her with his own body.

The charm around Andy’s neck sizzled into her skin and the Sibyl tattoo on her right forearm seemed to catch fire as bullets ripped into the Jeep from both sides.

Glass shattered. The
thump-thump
of holes punched in metal nearly deafened Andy. The Jeep rocked and pain blasted into her left leg. She bit her lip instead of crying out, but when fire lanced her right arm, she figured they would die right here, and quickly. She couldn’t see anything but black carpet and torn leather and metal and now light popping into the Jeep from hole after hole as the MAC-10s chewed it to pieces.

She yanked on her elemental energy, not caring how much water came or how hard. The Jeep rocked all over again as water sprayed through the shattered metal and glass, and the gunfire cut off. Andy heard the whooshing roar of waves underneath them. The sudden silence outside made the clang of a manhole cover hitting alley walls twice as loud. Something exploded. Another manhole cover bashed stone. Water mains gave up everything she asked them to send her, and she knew she was rupturing several of them. Thank God. Panting, trying to ignore the agony in her arm and leg, Andy drew the water forward, pulled it all, every bit, and hoped she was turning the alley into one big psychotic waterslide.

“Cover your weapon,” Andy warned Jack just as the Jeep slid and spun in the current and water flooded through the ruined windows on her side.

As the big waves passed, Andy thought she heard screaming. From farther away, sirens cranked into the background noise.

The Jeep went still again.

“Out,” Jack said, and she knew they had to move. If the shooters were still standing, they’d reach the Jeep in seconds, cram their MAC-10s through the jagged glass, and shred them like so much bloody paper. Andy had to get a fix on these bastards and drown them properly.

“One … two …” Jack hesitated, then grunted, “Three.”

His weight shifted off her and Andy didn’t let herself think. She ignored the throbbing fire in her arm and leg, shoved open the Jeep door, and fell out shooting, splashing as she landed in the waterlogged alley.

Gunfire erupted on Jack’s side of the Jeep, and Andy didn’t hear anything but the noise, couldn’t smell anything but gunpowder and water—and something like a wet, moldy cat.

Her eyes focused.

One shooter on her side down. Two more coming at her fast, weapons pointed.

Human
, her brain said.
But not
.

Whatever. She pumped three rounds into the one closest, then the one farthest away.

They staggered—and kept coming.

They looked big, too big at the shoulders. Built like men, but enhanced. Disproportionate. Their faces seemed too square, like cartoon thugs, but those MAC-10s weren’t funny at all.

“Shit!” She lowered her SIG and strafed the first shooter’s ankles. The bastard tumbled onto the wet pavement, yelling his head off. Andy dropped the second shooter the same way, at close range, using her bullets like a sword and nearly cutting his feet right off his legs. Just in case the big bastards did have demon blood, she shot them both in the head, and crowned the one lying in the wet alley behind them, just for good measure.

“Jack!” Why was she yelling? She couldn’t hear a damned thing. And the shooters—the ones she had pumped full of bullets—were starting to move.

“Jack, goddamnit, are you alive?”

Andy tried to lift her right arm to line up her shots to kill the assholes all over again, but the damned weapon wouldn’t budge. Her left leg had gone dead on her, too. Water poured into the alley from every direction, bashing against the shooters and Andy and the Jeep. Nothing contained the waves, so they moved on through. Damn it! If she could fill the alley, she’d have a fighting chance since she could breathe water and maybe the shooters couldn’t.

Don’t drown Jack. Be careful. Be careful!

But she couldn’t see him, couldn’t sense him, still couldn’t hear shit-all. No idea if Jack was still alive. Andy let out her rage in a massive scream—and she heard the answering, thunderous roar of a wind funnel storming across the streets of New York City.

“Cover and anchor!” she yelled in case Jack could hear her, and she rolled against the Jeep and wrapped her good arm around the front tire, turning her face away from the alley mouth and the weird, writhing shooters who absolutely were trying to get up despite being shot in a dozen places, including their big, thick heads. The third shooter, the one who hadn’t charged her yet, had already made it to his feet.

The sky darkened to near night, and wind blasted down the alley, pushing Andy’s wet hair away from her face and staggering the struggling shooters.

A big tornado came screaming into the alley, blasting gate and shooters and Jeep alike as it whirled to a stop and vanished, thunder crashing over the spot where it had been.

Dio hit the ground less than three feet in front of Andy, knives drawn and teeth bared.

Andy rolled over and lifted her SIG with her left hand. The shooters were up, all right, but they were moving back. Turning. Now they were running, splashing through puddles and sluices. Three more bashed around the Jeep and ran past Dio.

Andy would have brought more waves, but she couldn’t muster the force. Too much pain. Too much blood mixing with the water all around her. Everything felt like congealing ice except the hot spots in her arm and leg. Everything smelled like copper and burned powder.

Dio planted three-sided African blades in the shooters’ backs—and they kept running. Dio hit them again, and still they kept moving.

“What the hell are they?” Dio’s yell barely trickled into Andy’s numb ears.

A shadow rounded the back of the Jeep, and Andy almost shot Jack between the eyes before she realized it was him. He was bleeding from the chest and neck, and his eyes—dear God. Andy had never seen a human male with eyes so cold and furious.